"Marines Planning to Take Do-It-Yourself Focus and Start Prototyping, Manufacturing and Deploying 3D Printed Systems Like Surveillance Drones"

Marines are the first service to 3D print military-grade ammunition and spare parts for weapon systems.

Service will deploy a tiny unmanned aircraft to become the first 3D printed drone used in combat operations by conventional forces. Marines see it as just the beginning of a new way of equipping and supplying forces in the field.

Digital manufacturing is a technology the military has been pursuing for some time. The Pentagon made headlines in January when it disclosed an experiment in which swarms of 3D printed micro-drones were launched successfully from Navy Super Hornet fighter aircraft.

How the military would bring security into digital manufacturing so far has stirred “a lot of discussion but not a lot of action. The issue is how to protect a system’s “digital thread,” the term used in the industry for data associated with each product throughout the manufacturing lifecycle.

The Pentagon has not yet addressed this issue. Industry experts suggest the military could create “Blockchain” networks to ensure the integrity of the data. A Blockchain doesn’t stop attacks but gives users tools to audit data for unauthorised changes.

The Marines’ unmanned aircraft is significant because it would operate just like other, far more expensive, portable unmanned aircraft that are used for “over-the-hill” intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

“Our team is very enthusiastic about the unmanned aircraft , but even more enthusiastic about what it represents for the future.

3D printing gained an early following in the military because it was seen as a solution to the perennial problem of shortages of spare parts for aging weapon systems. The Marines have embraced the technology, which they see as compatible with their “adapt and overcome” culture.

“Imagine being in a forward deployed environment, and you can ‘order’ the weapons and equipment you need for the next day’s mission from an entire catalog of possible solutions."

“These solutions can all be upgraded literally overnight, in order to integrate new components or adapt to new requirements. On a very small scale, the unmanned aircraft shows us that this is possible right now with the UAS family of systems.”

Empowering Marines to manufacture equipment and parts as needed has enormous ramifications. It represents a revolution in the future supply chain.”

If a unit were to deploy with a dozen different UAS, for instance, “We would have to take a dozen or more different types of packaging and associated sustainment parts.” The goal is to have a “small manufacturing capability” locally. 

All that would be needed is a desktop printer, a box of components, and a spool of plastic 3D printing filament. We envision a “near infinite set of different UAS that we could produce from those basic elements.
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The unmanned aircraft will be used for surveillance missions, along with several other 3D printed unmanned aircraft that the Marines are still developing. “We can have a backpack-able fixed wing UAS for long endurance ISR. We can have a small quadcopter for building clearing operations,” he said. “We will forward deploy these capabilities into a combat zone as soon as possible.”

From a cost perspective, 3D printed drones will save money in the long run. Because the military only buys in small numbers, the upfront cost of a military 3D printed drone is higher than those drones that are sold commercially. “However, it is orders of magnitude less expensive than any military-use UAS with similar performance."

A drone made by Marines in a trailer will not be a substitute for high-end aircraft made by Pentagon contractors, but that is beside the point. 

“Ultimately, it's about optimising specific mission needs to the equipment we use to fight those missions. Many of the requirements today could be met with lower end equipment, and often the priority is to get things fast, which is one reason this technology is catching on. 

“Additive manufacturing and localized manufacturing allows us to do this at a scale and speed never before seen."

Marines clearly have ambitious goals but recognise the technology and the business culture are not there yet. There are no expectations that, today, a Marine will buy an expensive printer and make military-compliant axles. 

But they do see a future of “micro-factories” propping up in overseas combat zones and even on large Navy ships where troops will make spare parts and systems like drones, trucks and small radios. 

“On demand, as needed, closer to the point of need. That’s something we don’t have. We assume when we forward deploy, we bring every single thing we might need, just in case. The assumption today is that the supply chain may or may not support our needs.”

Marine Corps needs help from the private sector to better grasp the economic incentives and the potential capabilities of digital manufacturing. “We need to understand where the technology is going, the art of the possible. The good news for the military is that incoming recruits are likely to be more familiar with 3D printing than their superiors. 

The Marine maker movement appears to be gaining momentum. Labs are being built and some “maker units” have been deployed overseas. “Maker labs will be open to everyone, regardless of occupation, rank, or prior experience with design and prototyping.

Maker units are equipped with a 3D printer or mini-mill along with a laptop to support design and production. A unit of any size or type may request support from Marine Corps Installation and Logistics to explore becoming a maker unit.

"Logistics Process, Capabilities and Organisations Must be Systematically Assessed for Meeting Readiness Requirements"

Every military activity or exercise is an opportunity for assessing logistics performance, but it is rare that military exercises comprehensively test and assess operational sustainability and logistics readiness. 

Fewer still are those exercises that test logistics readiness through a major deployment performed at short-notice; a phase of an operation that demands all supporting agencies are ready."

There must be a high state of materiel readiness across the force. In addition to appropriately funding the sustainment of equipment, and the establishment of appropriate stocks in appropriate areas to enable operational contingencies, the means of sustaining equipment must be as appropriate for support operations as they are for efficiency in garrison. 

Failures in materiel readiness are often replicated in major sustainability issues on operations, and necessitate consequential actions such as switching parts between aircraft to achieve desired operational readiness outcomes."

Most requirements/capabilities assessment applications assume the amount of time equipment part spends in Repair Pipeline is independent of the demand process.

But in practise this assumed independence is not always expected. If the repair system requires queuing for piece of equipment or technical staff, or if the repair requires unavailable subassemblies then the demand process and repair times including when parts are not available on time, are usually positively correlated—during periods of high demand parts are likely to take longer to repair. 

If there is little or no queuing, and repair parts are available, technical staff are likely to do whatever it takes to induce negative correlation between demand process and repair times, so during periods of high demand the repair times are shortened to extent possible

Virtual Simulator to be Part of Wider Training Feedback Program to Support/Enhance Real-Life Training Exercises”
 
Using the latest advances in gaming technology, the new VR training platform aims to improve training for personnel by making it more realistic, intuitive and immersive.
 
Trainees can use the simulator and use intuitive gesture control designed to match real-world battlefield actions. This is coupled with HD surround sound and highly realistic visuals to bring to life training scenarios in VR.
 
Trainees will be able to hold a virtual ‘gun’ and crouch and crawl when necessary, just as they would on a real-life exercise. They will be able to practice this virtual exercise as many times as needed before going into the field for real, preparing them more effectively for operational deployments
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A reconstruction and evaluation team is giving sailors in ongoing Dynamic Manta anti-submarine warfare exercise almost real-time feedback that helps them learn from any mistakes they make each day instead of waiting weeks or months for corrections.
 
An In-Stride Debriefing Team IDT participants in the air, surface and undersea domains understand each day what contributed to their success in finding the target submarine in that day’s serial, or if they didn’t find the submarine, what opportunities they had to detect the sub and why they missed their target.
 
In some cases, the issue could be as simple as operating a sonar at the wrong depth in the water column, where a simple fix could help the team find success the next day. In other cases, the lessons learned may be more complicated – but participants are finding out during the exercise while they can consult other experts and try to correct out their mistakes, whereas in other exercises they might not understand until weeks or months later what went wrong.
 
“Normally during most exercises you don’t get that sort of immediate feedback. So what we’re hoping to see is maybe at the beginning of the exercise the people shaking the rust off, if you will, to at the end of the exercise they are feeling really that they’ve gotten that feedback that they need in a real-time feedback loop such that their skillsets are improved.”
 
The capability is like a test where you can see the answer to the first question and know if you got it right or wrong before moving on to the second question.
 
That immediate feedback can help participants “see if you’ve improved and understand where maybe your mistakes are. And that’s incredibly important, because a lot of times in these exercises the ships, the assets don’t know if they got the answer right until weeks later after there’s been some feedback. So that real-time here’s the answer to Question 1, this is how you did, let’s take Question 2, is really important.”
 
For an example, say an exercise had nine submarines and 40 maritime patrol aircraft missions that were flown – but no surface ships at the time. All the data had to be collected when the aircraft came back from their missions, and in sorting through stacks and stacks of papers from the exercise, you realize that 75 percent of the missions were cold – the airplanes did not detect a submarine – and the aircrews would have no way of knowing if there was just no submarine in their operating area or if they missed it due to a mistake they had made.
 
“They were cold, and they don’t know why, if they missed anything.”
 
With just a little more information on the submarines’ actual tracks, you could figure out what detection opportunities were missed and, with perhaps with a little more information, why.
For feedback, the snapshots are mapped out every interval or so, where the subs were versus anti-submarine warfare assets, and comments regarding what actions the crew took versus what they should have done.
 
“The idea is that the operations officer takes that aboard ship, gets the whole team around it and talks his way through it and picks up on what went well and what could go better, to accelerate the lessons learned process.”
 
The PBED process – planning, briefing, executing and debriefing – is above all else a way to improve proficiency quickly. “That is exactly what we’re doing here. So we receive the data, do the analysis and debrief.”
 
During tactical training, PBED process is enhanced by playback tools that allow operators to listen back to conversations on the bridge and re-look at what they could see on their screens at the time, to discuss in vivid detail what they knew and how they arrived at the decisions they made.
 
“Being part of Dynamic Manta, we’re constantly analyzing the tactics being used in each combined ASW exercise to provide lessons learned to all of the major players. During the debriefs, we have a chance to teach doctrine and help the participants from every community become a more lethal force.”
 
A recent pilot program tested in the fleet to provide information systems training virtually to shipboard trainees proved promising enough that the Navy plans to implement it, enabling students to learn and work on the exact systems they will operate on their ships.
 
The Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services CANES Training Virtual Environment will provide a workshop, using displayed network connection and linked up with an instructor for training that’s realistic, relevant and up-to-date with their particular ship’s systems.
 
Trainees and instructors have grappled with training that hasn’t replicated or fully reflected the onboard systems infrastructure that sailors encounter when on their ships, which can vary by ship. While the Navy had fielded to the workshop the same equipment the fleet uses, shipboard trainees haven’t always had the latest technology available.
 
“It’s hard to keep up with the technology refresh rate on all the things when you’re trying to modernize a fleet, so over time, the equipment we are training our CANES operators on became out of date and out of sequence with the majority of the fleet.” Often, “whatever trainees would see in the fleet would not exactly be what they would see” in the workshop simulator.
 
So the virtual training environment ensures that’s no longer the case, and trainees will learn from training virtually on systems with the look and feel of the same systems and versions installed aboard their ships.
 
Here’s how CANES TVE works: A trainee logs in and selects the particular version of CANES on their ship for whatever they are training to, and the instructor sets up the virtual environment. “It send a series of instructions to the network, and it would be built into the virtualized environment all
 
the servers that make up the CANES stack. It would be fed back to the trainee, and they would see the environment, and it would replicate and operate exactly like their version” on their ship.
 
The CANES TVE was ran through a pilot program with the forward-deployed naval force while both ships were pierside. They were able to bring up the instruction, with a facilitated instructor, and do that kind of background training that they couldn’t do otherwise.”
 
“Once the pilot is complete, this every trainee who sits down now will go through at a laptop, see the version that they will actually use out in the fleet – not some generic version – and you can sit down a person with CANES 1.0/1.0 hardware and software next to a kid who is going to a 2.0/3.0 ship, and they can go through the same training, but on their version.”
 
“Debrief is the most important part, that’s how the guys get all their lessons learned. So we construct the maps with detailed tracks, depth movements, detections, and commanders’ commentary on what tactical thinking drove their decisions.
 
The we got the chance to interact with the squadrons and the surface ships and submariners and poke them to talk about what they did and how they can improve.”
 
 

“Marines AH-1Z Viper Aircraft Updated Version of AH-1W Bring New Capabilities/Features into Squadrons Arsenal”
 
“The AH-1Z’s are replacing the AH-1W’s with greater fuel capacity, ordnance capabilities, and situational awareness.”
 
More Firepower
 
The AH-1Z can carry and deploy 16 Hellfire missiles, effectively doubling the capacity of its predecessor, the AH-1W. Updated avionics systems and sensors are another important aspect of the upgrade.
 
The upgraded capabilities allow the squadron to further project power.
 
“With the new turret sight system sensor, we can see threats from much further out than before. Obviously, that’s a huge advance for our situational awareness.”
 
“Having the new digital display systems under glass is a big change from the old steam gauges. “Another thing you notice is that in the electrical optical sensor, there’s a night and day difference.”
 
The updated electrical systems create a new situation for Marine avionics technician with the squadron.
 
“The new Zulus incorporate systems from the AH-1W and the UH-1Y and essentially combine them. The upgraded turret sight systems create much more in-depth images, which allow pilots to pinpoint targets better and get more descriptive, accurate pictures.”
 
Maintainers are essential to keep the squadron at the peak of readiness
 
“Maintenance Marines have done an outstanding job of accepting the new aircraft. They have really done the majority of the heavy lifting on this project, and we definitely appreciate them.”
 
Although there will be a learning curve working with the new system due to its modernity, crews are excited to work with the upgraded helicopters.
 
“Times are changing and we need for the AH-1W’s to retire. And, the AH-1Z’s are the perfect candidate to replace them.”
 
 

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This ticket schedule item is currently under review by several dispatch teams. Installations have not yet responded with a quote.


In April 2006, Boeing was awarded $67.6M fixed-price contract
for the remanufacture of several existing U.S. AH-64As to the AH-64D
configuration; between May 2009 and July 2011, a further five contracts were
issued to remanufacture batches of AH-64As to the upgraded D variant. Since
2008, operation of older AH-64A has been recommended to undertake modernization
programs to become AH-64Ds, given Boeing& U.S. Army plans to terminate
support for the A-variants in the near future. Apache effectiveness against
ground forces has been bolstered by the addition of the AGM-114N – a Hellfire
missile fitted w/ thermobaric warhead,  approved for full production in 2005.




McDonnell Douglas studied an improved AH-64B design w/ updated
cockpit, & other upgrades in the mid-1980s. In 1988, funding was approved
for a multi-stage upgrade program to improve sensor and weapon avionics systems
and incorporate some digital systems. However, rapidly improving technology led
to the upgrade program being canceled in favor of more ambitious changes.
Development of the more advanced AH-64D Apache Longbow was approved by the
Defense Acquisition Board in August 1990. AH-64D prototype testing ended in
April 1995. During the testing, six AH-64D helicopters were pitted against a
numerically superior group of AH-64A helicopters & results demonstrated that
AH-64D has a seven times increase in survivability and four times increase in lethality
compared to the AH-64A.




Full-scale production of the Apache Longbow was approved in October 1995 w/ $1.9-billion five-year contract signed in August 1996 to upgrade & rebuild 232 existing AH-64A Apaches. The first production AH-64D flew in March 1997 & cost of AH-64D program totaled $11bn through 2007. Agusta Westland had been producing Apache components for the international market, but
since 2004, Korea Aerospace Industries has been the sole manufacturer of the Apache's fuselage. Prior to this, fuselage production was handled by Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical during the 1980s & ‘90s but legal dispute between Teledyne Ryan and Boeing broke out over the eventual transfer of fuselage production.

This ticket schedule item is currently under
review by several dispatch
teams. Installations have not yet responded with a quote

This ticket schedule item is currently under
review by several dispatch
teams. Installations have not yet responded with a quote

This ticket schedule item is currently under
review by several dispatch
teams. Installations have not yet responded with a quote

This ticket schedule item is currently under
review by several dispatch teams. Installations have not yet responded with a quote

This ticket schedule item is currently under
review by several dispatch
teams. Installations have not yet responded with a quote